Muse

i think you're ready now to hear a little story about a girl girl named megan girl named megan that didn't have a very good time in high school i'm referring to myself when i say megan it's me megan i know you look at me now and think boy she must have breezed through high school not the case annie okay they used to try to blow me up they threw firecrackers at my head firecrackers i mean Literally, I'm not saying that figuratively. I got firecrackers thrown at my head. They called me a freak. You know what I did? I pulled myself up. I studied really hard. I read every book in the library. And now, I work for the government. I have the highest possible security clearance. Don't repeat that. I won't. I can't protect you. I know where all the nukes are, and I know the codes. I won't say anything. You would be amazed. A lot of shopping malls. Don't repeat that. TBTL.

oh snap this comedian was crazy in the 80s with his raw and delirious routines jared oh he's hilarious dog who is rick moranis anytime you can do something that's fun you like to do and make money doing it hey it's a win win win and anytime you can win win win you're win win winning you know if you're just winning or win winning that's that's just winning or win winning but when you're win-win-win you're win-win-win and hell yeah oh won't somebody

please think of the children all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tvtl show it just might be too beautiful to live oh la la my name is luke burbank i am your host oh hey y'all said my name coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon where i decided to roll the dice right before the program or at least as the intro music was playing i've made a huge mistake i decided to run to the kitchen to grab a little more coffee which meant as i ran back in i forgot to fully shut the uh sliding door into this room and now Bubbles is poised to try to jump on this table.

A major Whisker Watch alert is in effect here.

So I'm going to be dealing with that. Half of my brain is going to be dealing with keeping the cat off of the broadcast table and then the other half is going to be focused on episode 3885 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Kind of a weird story out of Oregon where the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Control Board, the person in charge of it and a number of other folks there have all had to step down because of a scandal involving something called Pappy Van Winkle.

Excuse me, I'm not a La Hocke and I do not like beer.

We'll tell you the latest on that. But also, speaking of drinks, Starbucks, Starbeez, if you're nasty, as a patented a new machine that will help streamline the process of you getting your 15 pump caramel macchiato half cap. This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world. So we will take a look at what's going on there. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I'm going to give you an opportunity to, you and the listeners, an opportunity to make fun of me and my obsessive nature today with a little story about a breakthrough I had last night. I feel like I've told you this before This is pretty embarrassing I mean I think you'll both Associate with this At least knowing my personality But it's also embarrassing But as you know I've been Kind of addicted to the Dan Lebitard Show with Stu Gott's podcast For the past I don't know What's been my journey with that three years now Yeah I think actually

I think longer because Well I got obsessed with it I was still living in Bellingham And I feel like we started talking about it a lot and then I feel like you got into it and then you sort of got out of it and then you got back into it.

Well, I did kind of, I think baseball takes up a lot of my attention, so like the last, I don't know, the last, you know, whatever, last summer I didn't really listen much, and then winter came, and I've been listening a lot lately, and here's the deal for people who don't know, this is a show that outputs tons of content. It's kind of like, I mean, this maybe gives us too much credit, but it's almost like a TBTL style show of sports where they do everything they can to not talk about sports or talk about sports in an annoyingly funny way or a funny, funnily annoying way or what have you. They used to be at ESPN, but they were constantly battling with ESPN and doing.

passive aggressive things like doing after their Super Bowl after the Monday after the Super Bowl a few years ago when they were still on ESPN they led with a review of the masked singer from the previous night and they had done that they led with Billy Gill doing his mask singer recap instead of talking about the Super Bowl that was their relationship with the company and then eventually it was really funny anyway then they went uh and now they're kind of this independent uh network anyway that that's the background if you haven't heard me can i say one thing about that before yeah about the program in

general to me it's like so many shows of its kind including the howard stern show and including even this program where i don't really listen to it for the person who is officially the host of it i love the other people that are in the universe of the show like you just mentioned billy gill And, you know, Greg Cody and all of the people that are kind of Stugats, certainly the people that are surrounding Levitard. I just love that. The Stern Show. I don't really care that much about Howard Stern. I love to know what's going on with Benji or, you know, other folks. And with TVTL, people don't care about what's happening with me. You and back when Jen was on the show and Sean, there's something really special about being the other people on a show that really elevates your Q rating. And so I'm just saying enjoy it, my friend. Enjoy being the most popular member of TBTL. I disagree.

I think our listeners love being mad at you.

No, they're mad at me. I'm saying they don't like me. They don't identify with me. And that's the burden of being, although funnily enough, if we broke it down, you probably end up making exactly the same amount of sounds on this show, if not more than me. But I just feel like when you're the first person to talk when the mic gets cracked, it's like you, for some reason, are less interesting than all of the other people who are in the universe of the show. At least that's my experience as a listener.

Well, it's interesting. I mean, I've been listening. I mean, I shudder to think how many hours I've clocked of listening to that show now. And they have this weird thing where each day that they release shows, they release like five different podcasts into their feed. Like one is called the local hour where they talk about local Miami sports. And again, all of this is so tangential to the core. I mean, the center cannot hold on any of their conversations, but they have the local hour and then something they call the big suey, which is I don't even know. It's like a throwaway hour.

I've never even understood. I think I used to know what that was a reference to.

Yeah, me too. It has. It was what a guest of theirs referred to is like they were talking like sewer content, basically. Right. Somebody used suey as slang for sewer or something like that. So and then they have their regular show, hour one and their regular show, hour two, and then a post game show. All of this made way more sense when they were actually doing a radio show on ESPN and then offering the other stuff around it as bonus content. But now, like none of it makes sense anymore. But it's still, you know, I'm in the rhythm of it. I like it, whatever. All of that is to say you were listening to the Dan Levitar. Oh, actually, I want to address what you said for a second, because the universe of that show is greatly expanding, especially since they created their own network.

Like the real universe.

Just like the real universe.

Is it mostly Meadowlark Media Dark Matter?

Well, it's dark content. But you probably wouldn't even know a lot of the people who are on it now. But I will say that because they release all these different kind of versions of the show and then Dan was sick for a while recently, like they will mess around with different kind of formations. And sometimes Dan is there and sometimes not. And there are times I'm listening and he's not on there. And it's like and then he comes in and it's like, oh, dad's here. Right. But that's not.

But also the thankless work that people like me and Dan Levitard and I do put us at the same level. The thankless work of being the titular host of one of these things is no it's no one cares about your B.S. But if you're not there, the drink doesn't get stirred quite the same way.

I think that's what I was going to say. I was going to say, but like when he was out for like a week and a half or two weeks on end and there wasn't any of that structure, like I like all the people around it. But you still do need that central that you do need that central character. So anyway, all of that is to say, I listen to the show.

We can agree this. This show would not be the same without me. And that that's what I got up this morning wanting to establish.

You again, like TBTL. In fact, I was reading some dazzling donor messages last night and several of them kind of mentioned how when I first heard about the show, my friend said, you're not going to get it at first, but give it time. Right. Like it's built on a lot of inside jokes. Well, the levitard universe is very much the same thing. and you had been recommending it to me you and the stew bot had been recommending this show to me for probably a couple of years before I finally really got into it I think I would listen to one here and there and it just it didn't grab me because I wasn't, you know, in. But I remember the first time I really listened earnestly to the show where I really said, I'm going to I'm going to take this walk that I had to get somewhere. And I'm going to really try to get into this show. And I had no idea what was going on. All I remember was there was one main conversation happening. But then there was a secondary conversation where some sports player, some athlete, I want to say a basketball player, there were speculations that this player was going to move teams and move cities. But it was pure speculation and somebody who I believe I can now identify probably as Billy Gill throughout the show kept on checking real estate listings in some city to talk about whether or not like whether or not something has either been bought or sold. I can't even remember, but they were trying to sleuth out is this rich basketball player moving cities by looking at real estate listings and like kind of seeing what had been moving in the market and whether or not that would be a place where somebody would live. And they keep coming back to like what kind of a mansion this person would have. But it was weird because the conversation would shift away from it. But then out of the blue, somebody would just come back with another real estate list. An update. An update. From Redfin. And now I can totally hear like now I get the rhythm of the show. That's one of the funniest things about the show. They'll move away. And then but somebody just won't let go of something. So they'll crack their mic open and just give another stat or they'll give another real estate listing or whatever. And I realized that's one of the brilliant kind of comedic patterns of the show. All of that is to say, I remember where I was when I was listening to that. I don't remember clearly the details of who the player was or what the date was, but I remember where I was. And it's been sort of a dream is a strong word, Luke. I don't want to say dream here. Makes me sound really pathetic. But it's been a goal of mine. That's it. A goal is a dream without magic. A goal of mine. We're putting it on your tombstone. Anyway, I have thought to myself, and I think I even posted one time on the Dan Lebitard show Reddit, subreddit, like I'm trying to find the first show I ever really listened to in earnest. Like before I totally got the show, as they say in the Dan Lebitard parlance, now that I get the show, I want to go back and listen to that first episode where I was finally like sort of into it, but still very confused.

And I had thrown out some hints to the hive mind on Reddit and people didn't they weren't able to like kind of help that much.

because you wanted you were using the orienting information of it was the show where they were trying to like figure out if this player was moving based on real estate yes exactly and so

and I knew that so I had started listening right before a Super Bowl and I know that it was right before the pandemic because I never got to hear I never really heard straight up old school ESPN Radio Levitard show I think I caught the very Last like literal months of That before the pandemic hit But here's the deal last Night I was sort of listening to this again I think my brain was wandering because they didn't Post any shows yesterday and I Was like I was like I think Chris Hayes said this one time In our text chains I'm like I was like a smoker like rooting around In the ashtray of my car looking For an old butt to hit like that's how

much i wanted told me not posting on president's day was an option right well i'll tell you what

i actually thought of that as i because i wanted to um we had been we had a pretty busy weekend and so i was really looking forward to like really like kind of nesting yesterday i wanted to make a i've made my last pot of chili of the season i think because the weather is going to get warmer weird thing yesterday i meant to tell you i think i did something that's never been done in the universe before i don't know if you felt a ripple but i mowed part of my lawn for the first time in the season and made my last pot of chili for the last time in a season and usually those things don't overlap but it's just like it was just cold enough to be craving chili and and getting the house warm with those smells and everything but also i had a patch of grass i had to take care of anyway all of that is to say i wanted to listen considering that by the way mowing oh yeah your

new place right well that's definitely like it's starting to come but it's it feels a little premature it feels like i want it to be legit spring but also that i really want to savor i'm sorry to cut into your conversation but i just the first again i just don't understand why we're not attracting a younger audience anymore but the first the first mo of the spring andrew it's just it's so much fun that i really want to wait till the perfect moment you want to have spring training on in your head i do it's got to be happening it's got to be actually warm it's also ideally not going to be like then we go back to like 20 degrees yeah and for

Rosen whatever for three more weeks like I need it to really be a special springtime experience but anyway okay so so let what happened with you trying to find this rosebud of an episode of

the lebitard show for you so yes I was purposely leaving out a little bit of information here because I had a revelation last night as I was opening up my lebitard podcast and seeing that there was no nothing in there that the cupboards were bare I was like man I could go back and listen to the archives um and i was like yeah that's a little bit weird there's plenty of other podcasts to listen to but i still sort of couldn't shake this urge and then i started thinking again about that first episode i was like wouldn't it be fun if i could somehow track down that very first episode that i heard about the mansion real estate listings whatever and then i remembered well i know where i was when i heard that and i was walking across a park to meet up with you in St. Paul, Minnesota. I remembered this because I think I was meeting up with you and the StewBot and the StewBot's beloved Mandy, and we were meeting up on, I believed, a Sunday night to watch a football game. Wasn't this the Seahawks playing? It was, and all the details started to come together, and then I went to my Google Calendar, and I was able to confirm it. Like, I can nail down at least probably the week of content where this aired because I was like, listen, I know that I was meeting up with you guys to watch this football game. I know that I had just landed in St. Paul like an hour earlier. We're going to watch this football game. And then we had work stuff at, you know, American Public Media the next day. And last night I thought, could that have been the last trip I took there? That would have been I know it was the wintertime because I know it was cold and I was wearing my big brown jacket. This is too much detail. But I'm just like piecing this all together. And I'm like, that might have been that January trip we took where we had like kind of an all day TBTL retreat and then a bunch of stuff throughout the week. It was like one of our more serious sort of like week of work out of St. Paul. And I was like, I think that would have been like January of 2020. and I look on my on my personal calendar I have a personal calendar I'm not trying to brag but I do and I saw that okay well that was like I think January 13th maybe was our first day of meetings but January 12th 2020 would have been Sunday night and there might have been Sunday night football and I looked it up and there it was it was indeed the Seahawks versus Packers it was the

nfl divisional round and i'm like yes memory serves we did not do well because i have a picture this could be our show pick today good send it to me i have a picture of you and me making a sad face in that bar because of the seahawks losing and it's one of those i don't know if your phone does this but with like an iphone it'll just randomly like you know on your kind of whatever you want to call it like landing page or something it'll just throw up a picture from a while ago for like no discernible reason and that one comes up a lot you and me being sad because the seahawks are

losing i want to come back to this because i have some more details about that night but that seems like a weird policy in the day and age this is not a practice that i engage in people won't be surprised to hear but as people take more and more private photos of themselves and their partners i'm sure there's a way to like mark certain photos as like we'll don't have this pop Up randomly mark this as private but I don't know how much people automatically do that In the in the moment like hey we're Going to take this sexy photo but now make sure That you mark it private like it Seems like a really I feel like why are we not Hearing about a lot more people being angry about This automatic slideshow service

I I'm with You it seems dangerous luckily there's Nothing interesting happening in my phone except For pictures of the cat And you and me being sad about The Seahawks you and me somewhere where they serve alcohol being sad about a football team but yeah it does seem kind of dangerous in this day and age and i'm also sure that there's a million settings to control that i believe it's called the stack what at least on the iphone that like picture thing and it will sometimes something will come up and you can click on it'll say remove from stack which i think means it'll never show up there again if it's like an x or again something racy um but but i'm sure there's a way to to to control it and i'm sure i don't know how to do that but it sort of takes so like not takes over

but it's kind of like your lock screen will turn into a slideshow automatically no it's you that's

the thing it's not you so you've got your kind of main screen on the iphone where you got your lock screen then you've got the screen that's like your landing place where it's got just all your apps and then if you were to slide right on that you'd get the screen so it would never come up without you going to that screen but it's got the weather and like uh you know some stocks or something it's got the temperature it's got my meetings today it's got some top stories and things like that so

So, in other words, it would conceivably would only happen if you intentionally went over to this side of town on your phone. But it still is dicey. I'll tell you that.

I'm not sure I like them using the term top stories. I thought that was sort of a TBTL thing. I don't know if there's a potential lawsuit on our hands.

Oh, believe me. Cease and desist letters have been. Ravens have been sent. Okay, good.

So, we're on it. But I remember this game now that it was against Green Bay and that it was an important game. In my head, I was like, I think it was a playoff game, but I wasn't sure. And here, sure as shit, that game, like, we watched a playoff game against Green Bay, which makes sense because I don't know if you recall. I'm sure you do, and we don't have to get into details of it. Mandy had brought a couple of friends who are a couple of very pleasant fellas, but they were Green Bay fans. And it was just, like, rooting for the Seahawks with a couple of Green Bay fans there in St. Paul. It was just, like, a vibe that was very different than if you and I were just, like, watching the game here in Seattle. now luckily we had to have a little bit of energy towards being gracious which i didn't have a lot of energy you know what i mean when you're rooting for your team and watching but we did keep it

friendly unlike the time at nye's where i tried to fight right friend because i thought he was

stealing french fries exactly and again these fellas were really really nice um but it was just kind of like it's just a different vibe you can't like kind of you can't react sort of the same way when you're watching with fans of the other team right like it's just there's a decorum And so anyway, I just remembered all of those little tidbits and then to go to my calendar and see, oh, yeah, OK, well, I would have landed probably on Sunday night, January 12th or I'm sorry. Yeah, January 12th, 2020. And that would have been that we would have started to work the next day for our weeklong adventure in St. Paul. There was a big game on the 12th, which means I would have either I obviously they don't. Well, maybe it's not obvious, but they don't post shows on weekends. So it would have been some Levitard show, maybe Friday. But also, I'm kind of a weirdo. If I know I'm getting into a show that's sort of addictive and you have to listen to kind of a bunch of them to get into it, I might not just start with the very previous episode. I might go back a few days. Maybe it would have been like Wednesday the – what would that be? Whatever. Wednesday the 7th or the 8th or whatever that would have been. And but I'm now trying to locate the week of shows from the Levitard show from January 6th to January 10th, 2020. But the thing is, because they've switched networks, because there was a pandemic, because a lot of what they do is actually on YouTube. But then I listen to the podcast version of that. It's just like it's very it's split into a million different platforms. And I spent probably 45 minutes to an hour yesterday trying to find some place where this stuff would would be archived on Reddit. Somebody has independently archived stuff up until like 2017. But then the case goes cold from there. I found some weird ass podcast platform that I had never heard of before. That isn't even an app. Case gone cold. Could a podcast bring the heat? And I don't know if you've ever had this. Chances are not because you're not obsessive like me, but I was like scrolling. It was like you'd scroll through like 10 and then you just keep going like load more, load more, load more. But every time I would hit load more, I got back about maybe a year, maybe a year and a half. But each time it started like it almost crashed my computer. It was just like my browser couldn't handle. Like nobody's supposed to go this far back in the Levitard universe or whatever it is. It's like, and, but it was also the only straining the space time content, the very fabric of

time getting stressed.

You might've felt a ripple last night. I don't know. Eventually I had to give up because it just kept crashing on me and I sort of, Oh, you didn't get there. No, I didn't get there. So, you know, this was going to end with the athlete was the good news. That's what I want to find out. Like I would love to some, I mean, maybe the TBTL hive mind can help out because I

just like real estate talk.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if I could find it, I would play it for you. I think it would be good content, but I have to, I have to find it. figure this out i went back their archives on youtube only goes back to like 2021 or something like that i was i i don't know man i put in some time on this and i uh i came up with nothing but i was still very excited to see via the calendar how things lined up that it makes sense like if i remembered walking across a park on a snowy day to get to a bar to watch an important seahawks game with you and the stew about and mandy and i see on my calendar that all this shit lines up I'm like, okay, good. At least I know exactly what I'm looking for now. I just need to find access to the tape.

You're homing in on it.

I'm really homing in. That was a lot of time to spend on that. I probably spent more time talking about it.

It's going to be satisfying. Here's what I'm glad about. I'm glad there's the specificity of this mystery athlete, or at least an athlete that is still a mystery to us, and the possible real estate indicators of this whole thing, because that'll be very satisfying. because you will eventually figure this out, or one of the listeners will. More likely, one of our listeners will figure this out. And much like that piano that I was trying to figure out what it was, and it was from the band Menomino, it was a thing on TikTok that reminded me of a piano kind of breakdown on a song called Wet and Rusting by Menomino. And I mean, it had bedeviled me for like days and weeks. It was so satisfying to get the answer. And I am I'm confident we will get the answer to this.

Yeah, I think so, too. I was just logging into Reddit to see because I think it would have been like probably probably at least a year ago, if not more, that I even posted to Reddit. And it's pretty desperate. If I'm posting something to Reddit, I'm pretty desperate. I, you know, I read Reddit a lot, but I don't post to it much. I'm more of a lurker, as people say.

It's so weird how I am a little bit intimidated by Reddit. and i don't have any there's no great reason for that other than you know i guess some parts of it can get a little a little raunchy but i mean it's pretty well moderated right i mean it's not 4chan and that's by design right yeah i think of it as being kind of the wild west also it's it's so text-based that you know i think my my simple brain just needs lots of large pictures and tiles that i can click on to know what's happening like i would actually disagree with that i'm on it right

now almost everything is photo or video well that shows you how little i interact with it then that that's even how i conceive of it but it isn't you know it isn't it does have its roots more in an older era of the internet for certain um and so it's not quite as smooth or polished and it doesn't have it has rules about it and i'm not exactly sure what it is and you're right you can find anything on there like i think like instagram for example will have some well we know this because you had something taken down from instagram right probably erroneously but i

believe it was i believe i prevailed by the way in my legal challenge to that oh yeah i think that i think that that fire post about lake oswego not letting you go in the lake is now back up nice until they appeal it up to the supreme court level i don't like my chance with the roberts court on this but it probably has a place in lake oswego yeah right so anyway but i think

that reddit is i i think that like they you can post anything as long as it's in the right place but it's all like all these little communities are moderated it's almost a little bit mastodon in that way like they're all all these communities are moderated um by the people who belong in those communities right and so i don't know i it's a pretty cool space actually i believe that it's

just one of those things i remember my little brother sammy sammy was like like 30 something now with a beautiful baby um but it'll always be sammy to me uh i remember sam back in the day just being like oh you know what i really this is like when i want to say maybe even my space was around or maybe facebook was the ascendant thing and and i was like yeah i'm really on facebook now or whatever and he was like i just really dig red it just got lots of interesting things and i think i spent like a day trying to figure out how to navigate i just never got i never got sort of it was I was not native to me as they say with technology and so I just never learned how to sometimes you'll send me something or Chris will send me something that's like from a subreddit and it's always really funny but or interesting and there's a lot of good information there I just haven't ever figured out how to navigate it and so it just isn't something that occurs to me

you know what some of my favorite places on reddit are and I actually that's funny I wonder if I could use one of these spaces too there are things called like I think a subreddit is called help me find and there's another one that's something like what is this thing or something close to that right but like the help me find is actually i should post this to that because i tried the levitard community but the help me find is usually for a physical object like here is the teddy bear that you know my my mom got my son five months ago but it you know the head got ripped off and the kid is distraught like we need to we need to find a replacement or just like anything that's sort of weird that you need to find a replacement for or contrarily if you've stumbled on something and you post it to what is this thing like I don't know I was out walking in the woods and I found this weird metal thing that looks like an old tool what is it and the internet they always they always sleuth it out it is amazing to watch the and then of course with the occasional snarky comment or whatever in there as well it's really amazing to watch the hive mind work it out

yeah I'm already fascinated by this Maybe this is what this is my entry point. Somebody says, help me find the sound to this alarm clock. And it's somebody who's kind of screen capped to like a memefied picture of this alarm clock made by General Electric, which I feel like if I didn't have it in my bedroom, it was certainly in a bedroom in my house growing up and also in many subsequent places where I might stay the night. That kind of fake wood grain. Yep. Yep. I can picture alarm clock with the analog, you know, dial that you would spin back and forth like that is a very, very strong childhood memory for me.

Yeah, I can hear I can still hear. Oh, I'm now I'm looking at it as well. The one that you're talking about. Everybody had this clock. I had one similar. I can very much hear that sound. Mine was a boy. It made you not want to live like alarm clocks. I mean, I guess they got to get you out of bed. They can't be too pleasant. But that's something that we as a society have been messing with a little bit more in the age of smartphones, like finding like more pleasant ways for alarms to wake you up softly at first that get increasingly loud. But man, we woke up to the sound of a air raid.

Speaking of alarms, I've been on this thing where I've been getting up early on weekdays, and part of what has made it possible is the fact that the cat at 4.55 a.m. now just posts up outside my door and just starts shrieking. And it's kind of maddening to me because I want five more minutes of sleep, but on the other hand, it is very effective. It's kind of probably the main reason that I've stayed on course with this. like there would have been a lot of mornings where i would have been like this okay you know what this is not the morning for me to get up this early but today uh a funny thing happened and i think maybe it was because i was like playing with the like with the cats because holly's still here actually holly and bubbles are going back over to becca's tonight now we're just they're basically like two kids that now just have shared custody like the parents have shared custody it's like all right do you want the cats for a week sure and then they just go back and forth but um that's

kind of cool so they're both going over there because you have some yeah it's this kind of

yeah it's a it's an interesting approach that seems to be working well because they keep each other company well they keep each other company in that bubbles uh likes to try to climb on top of holly and holly likes to screech at her but but then they also have moments of cuddling and i just think it's good for both of them to know that there's another cat that exists in the world because they live in one of two contained apartments like they might think they're the only cat on earth which i feel like would be really just like psychologically damaging so they get to know that they're not the only cat that exists but anyway last night i was like playing with them kind of late uh and like had this like you know whatever feather thing on a stick that i was like they were having a lot of fun maybe because i kind of tuckered them out last night my alarm goes off at five and i realize bubbles is not outside my door screaming and so i'm like sweet dude i'll take an extra eight minutes of sleep on this snooze can i ask you a question

now you have food out at all times so you're not this is not a cry for food in the morning or do you feed them wet food or something in the morning or is this just a cry for like hey you've been sleeping and ignoring us enough like wake up and play with us now much like me doing this show

andrew it's just a cry for attention okay like because uh there's yeah i'm free feeding them which is probably not great for Holly. So bubbles because she's still kind of young and also just her, you know, she's a bangle. So she's just like, got like her metabolism is like a hummingbird. Holly is a, is a cat of larger carriage. She's a tuxedo cat. She's very sweet, but like, you know, if she's at Becca's house, it's a little bit more strict, but I've just got this like a remote controlled as an, I can do it from my phone, wherever I am. It's got a camera mounted. It's called a woe pet. I just, anytime that I see that the thing is empty, i'll just add four scoops of dry food that'll go into the thing and then they'll just have some of that also the litter box is automated i've got everything pretty automated in here which i have to say really makes it easier like sometimes that technology is is sort of over hyped uh in this case when it's like i can feed them from wherever i am and check on them by the camera and then also know that their litter is just getting like odorlessly placed in like a sealed chamber like it's a pretty convenient situation to be honest with you but anyway point is they're not it's never Holly Holly is great she's very docile and would never come and harass me but it's just Bubbles being bored this morning she wasn't bored or she was still asleep I guess I don't know what happened but I hit the snooze so I think my snooze is set for like 8 minutes so now it's like 5.07 and I wake back up and I look at the thing and I'm like she's still not messing with me oh my god this is amazing uh i guess i'll hit snooze again so i hit snooze again and now it's like 5 12 or something and i wake up bolt upright and i just go the cat is dead she died she had a cardiac arrest she's in the other room she died of loneliness she died of loneliness um because i don't let her sleep with me there's something medically wrong with the cat and i need to prepare myself when I open this door to see

see a cat that is as they say on monty python an ex cat like this cat is not going to be alive that's the only explanation for it being 512 and she's not freaking out outside the door and it's amazing maybe this is you know i'm not a parent of young children anymore maybe this is how parents of young children feel or sort of how you felt when you thought the cat escaped a while ago like I just went from being like oh my god this is so great I'm getting a little extra sleep to like the disaster has occurred yeah and then I like literally I'm like sitting up out of bed and then I just hear from like and I imagine she looks like Bill the cat from Bloom County when she's making the sound outside the door so just picture that for those of you old enough to know what I'm talking about she's of course fine and just I don't know she just she was also having a chill morning i guess but it was weird how quickly i went from being very relieved to being very

convinced that something had gone horribly wrong yeah i'm not trying to make a cat pun here but it's almost like um like what's the word i'm looking for catastrophizing sort of i think i'm saying that incorrectly i'm in my head about that word right now but um but yeah like it's funny how i will do that with the cats too and there's something like um like you immediately go to 1000 you're like what and it's like a reflection of you and a reflection of your cat parenting you know like how could i have let this happen and it's like you're like bingo where are you you i'm falling to my knees reaching my hands up to the heavens as the camera spins above me and the rain comes down and then bingo just like walks out from the litter box area and is like hey what are you doing on the floor so yeah i know that feeling very well so the good news everyone is

that both cats are still alive as of recording time. You know, I can't speak for the rest of the afternoon, but as of right now, they both seem to be just fine. And we seem to be at the point where we should take a quick break. So we're going to do that here on TBTL, and then we'll be back with some top stories for you. Stay with us.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man, razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. Having some real vocal trouble today, and I don't know why. I think it's, well, here's the thing. I've had like four cups of coffee already today. That also means four little splashes of half and half. And I think that I'm getting some glottal issues. I'm sorry. I think that last little throat clearing got us to where we need to be as a podcast family. Let's thank Judy Bornstein in San Mateo, California for her dazzling donation of dough to TBTL. By the way, Judy is keeping the show going with her generosity. Judy says, ahoy, ahoy, Luke and Andrew. Thank you so much for another year of hashtag content and for so many laughs. I really do feel like you are my friends. You have kept me company through good times and tough times for many years, and I could not be more grateful to you both. And to Bubbles, bingo, and Professor Bananas. How nice is that that now bingo's in the mix?

Nice. That's very nice.

Also appreciate the alliteration. We've got bubbles, bingo, and bananas. For my dazzling donor message, I'm hoping you help me let the tens know about my business. C-suite resolutions.

We'll let the tens know all about your business, Judy.

We'll put it right out there. We'll put it right there on Front Street. It's called C-suite resolutions. Boy, that whole C-suite thing, it tells you how long I've been outside of corporate America. Because to this day I still have to take a moment and go Wait, what does that mean? Because that's like a big term now About the people that are at the Like usually at the most Sort of The highest level of decision making In a company That's now kind of called the C-suite

Yeah, as in a meeting And somebody said Yeah, well the whole C-suite's coming down To meet with me or whatever And I was like Oh wow, that's intimidating

So Judy can help you If you need mediation Conflict and negotiation coaching Also, ombuds services, if you're an organization or an individual. Judy says, I know no one loves conflict, but avoiding it usually makes things worse. And sometimes it helps to have a trained, neutral third party working with you. God, I have so much to say on that topic, Andrew, which I will not get overly detailed or too long-winded with this. But I would just say I very much agree with that, Judy. and i have had the experience in various arenas both legal and otherwise where you just don't want to get into it you don't want there to be a conflict and then it's so much worse or even you don't want to open the email because the email has something in it that's going to make you have a bad feeling when you read it and yet when you actually do when you actually like talk to a professional like judy and you sort of deal with stuff and you open in the email and you have the conversation it always feels so much better like it is the most massive relief to just actually address things it says here i know no one loves conflict and

my brain sort of wandered and i sort of pictured myself yelling at somebody i told you i hate conflict like i feel like there's some sort of a cartoon in there or something judy says i have a

passion for helping people address their most vexing conflicts including workplace and business disputes, and salary negotiations. If I can be of help to a 10 out there, I can be found at www. How many W's? It's three of them. I was calling it the World Web for years. I was just calling it the Wide Web. Yeah. Dub, dub, dot, and it was getting nowhere. C, sweet resolutions. C, like the letter C, and then sweet. And then resolutions.com, that's C-Suite, resolutions.com. Power out, says Judy. And I would just say to all of you, everybody wins if you go to Judy's website because you would hire Judy, you would then be able to resolve or deal with whatever stuff you have going on. Then Judy has more money to donate to TBTL. It's just a self-licking ice cream cone, everyone. Just a frictionless system whereby we all get to do this longer. Judy gets to keep helping people. We get to keep podcasting. And you get to keep listening and also having your issues resolved. So everybody wins when they reach out to Judy. Thank you, Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody rattle, dattle.

We've also got to thank Penny Orlandini in Gig Harbor, Washington, who says, I'm currently in a C-suite conflict. Do you know anyone who might be able to help me with this?

Now, I may create a conflict here, and I could be wrong, but I think it might be Orlandinny.

Orlandinny. Yes. That's one of the first C-suite conflicts Penny needs to work out.

It could be wrong. Penny included a really helpful pronouncer, but sometimes pronouncers can also be interpreted differently. But I would go with Orlandinny.

All right. Penny Orlandini of Gig Harbor, Washington says, I love this show. It's my daily puttering companion. I've been a loyal fan since Cairo. I can't thank you enough for the hours of laughter, hot takes, insight, and sharing yourselves with all of the tens. Aw, Penny. Thank you, Penny. Well, thank you. Thanks for being such a, even if I can't pronounce your name, I have seen your name many, many times associated with different things with TBTL, whether donating or on Facebook or sending us emails. So thanks for being a ride or die with the show ever since the Cairo days. That was a long, long, long time ago. So, Benny, thanks for helping keep the show going. We really appreciate you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. We've got both cats out here now, and the problem is that... A major Whisker Watch alert is in effect here. Bubbles has climbed into Holly's carrying case. Meaning Holly now has to try to climb into Bubbles' carrying case, except it's like a backpack Bubbles' it takes a little more agility.

So are they both out because they're going traveling today?

The carrying cases are just in here because it's a small apartment. I don't have anywhere to keep them. But yes, I am going to have to take them both over to Becca's house tonight. And that would be a little bit of a trick only because Holly, for all of her being totally pleasant and docile, does not love the carrier and is able to sense. You're talking about a disturbance in the force. She is able to sense if I'm even thinking about putting her in a cat carrier. And then she knows exactly where to go. And it's like amazing how she figured this out, which is she goes to a point under my bed that the only way for me to get her out would be to like army crawl to her and then grab her. And then try to army crawl out While pulling her Which is kind of hard And I don't want to pull her arm out of the socket I don't want to get chomped on Not that she would do that But she somehow intuited that this is a place Much like at the lobby of my building This must be the place By talking heads She somehow realized this must be the place Where that guy can't get to me

They know their instincts kick in On the occasion that we have to get bananas into a case Into a traveling case of some sort We have to, like, make sure that the doors to the basement are closed. We've had to do this a couple of times recently for doctor's appointments, for vet appointments. And, like, you know, when you have a vet appointment that you've been waiting weeks to go to, like, you can't just push that off. But there is one place in our house where Bananas, she hasn't gone there in a while, but there's one place where we cannot reach her. In fact, I even think about, like, in the case of, like, an actual.

physical emergency what we would have to do we'd have to like actually kind of tear down this kind of very cheap temporary wall behind our refrigerator if we ever needed to get her out of here in case of emergency um and so we need to if we're going to the vet we need to make sure we close all access to the basement so that if she if we can't corral her and she goes running that we can actually get her to the vet i've had these fantasies where i'm just like i got to call the vet and say well we have to cancel our appointment in 20 minutes because the cat is behind the hot

water heater and what do you want me to do about that um would you would you tear the wall down if it came to it i mean if there was a fire or something you'd tear that wall down oh i mean

yeah no any kind of physical thing like that i'm not tearing the wall down and again even to call it a wall is not quite right there's it's it's the basement before it was a finished basement there's this area where there's a refrigerator in one section of the basement and then if you walk all the way around there's like a kind of a closet where in there is our furnace and our hot water heater and a couple of other things like that i call it the furnace room reminds me of the shining i gotta let the i gotta let the steam blow out of that otherwise the house will explode do you remember the shining was that the movie the shining trying to think might have only been in the book but that was a big part of his job was like the reader yeah yeah his uh the whole hotel The Overlook Hotel could explode If Jack didn't let the pressure Out of the

I feel like that's the kind of metaphor That Stephen King loves And that Stanley Kubrick was like A little on the nose

Yeah although I'm trying to The hotel doesn't explode at the end of the At the end of the movie

No nor are there like little like hedge Creatures chasing Jack in the maze Which is another divergence I think Between the book and the film

Yeah, I don't like the hedge creatures so much, although it is really creepy. But anyway, but yeah, if there was a that's what I'm saying, like if there's a real emergency, like there's this little area where it's like a piece of like, I don't know, it's not even plywood. It's like a small thing that they just use as a separator. And it doesn't really matter because it's buried way back in the back of the boiler room and it's buried behind a refrigerator on the other side. So it doesn't really matter. But yeah, if there is an emergency, a fire, an earthquake, whatever, like I'm just will tear that thing down and grab that cat. And I'm sure she will just tear the living shit out of me.

Well, let's hope it never comes to that.

Let's hope it never comes to that.

In the words of Michael Bluth, well, let's hope it doesn't come to that. Have you ever had Pappy Van Winkle bourbon? I bet the answer is no. The answer is no. Because apparently, like, three people on planet Earth have.

I was looking it up today. Like, you can get a bottle of it for, like, $3,000 shipped in from Idaho or something.

yeah this is i guess a very very rare bourbon that i'm i'm guessing maybe one or two of our listeners has actually tried just based on like i don't know the law of averages but it's so rare that the oregon um liquor and cannabis commission they had to add cannabis to it because that's probably as big a part of the commission now as the liquor right with however many cannabis places there are here um they set up a liquor lottery five years ago and the idea was that they because there was no way to get apparently this pappy van winkle bourbon um like you couldn't just call the liquor store and say when are you going to get another shipment like it's so rare that it was a whole situation and the only fair way to distribute it was to get a certain number of bottles and then I guess there was going to be I'm trying to see 24 bottles would come in each year through the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission and then they would have a drawing and 16,100 people applied or entered their name in the drawing to get themselves a bottle of this stuff and you know that would be oh sorry The state had 45 bottles. I think I misread that. So they had 45 bottles. 16,000 people wanted to get one of these 45 bottles. Obviously, the odds are pretty long. And it turns out that a bunch of dudes from the liquor board, including the guy that was in charge, Steve Marks, were conveniently taking a bottle or two of Pappy Van Winkle for their own selves and their private collection.

collection which was literally buying it though not taking it i think that's kind of a they're not

stealing right they're just prioritizing well in my mind they're stealing because it's not the cost it's not the retail cost of the uh bottle because i don't think if you were to buy it in the store it's not three thousand dollars is my impression i could be wrong about that by the way i don't see in this article that i'm reading by the way from the uh oregonian brad schmidt writing for the organization. i don't see like what the like pappy van winkle was selling if i give you won the lottery i'm guessing that it's not three thousand dollars um i could be wrong about that but i'm guessing that that's what you or i andrew if we decided our goal in life we're going to cash out our apm 40 what is it called 401k um i cashed one of those out to redo a bathroom in bellingham Great choice, Luke. I could have had five bottles of Pappy Van Winkle. If we were going to get, like, if we made it our goal in life to get a bottle of this and we were willing to spend $3,000, based on what you're seeing, where are you seeing it listed for $3,000?

Oh, you know, it was the very first result. And honestly, the lowest was $2,100, but most of them were around like $2,800 to $3,200. But it was the very first result when I typed it in as some sort of liquor clearinghouse place that was not in Washington State but would ship here.

I'm guessing that that cost is so you can get a bottle of it. If you're willing to pay that amount, someone will sell it to you. Whereas I'm guessing if you won the lottery in Oregon, you would get to buy it for a mere, I don't know, few hundreds of dollars or whatever the retail cost is. But it turns out that they were so they were paying for it. You're right. They were paying for it. But, like, the website for the lottery, like, specifically touted the fact that nobody at the OLCC would have any kind of special access to this. Like, it was actually the sales pitch when you went to, like, register your name in the lottery. Let's see. OLCC officials heavily promoted the lottery through social media and touted its fairness on the entry page. Quote, employees or representatives of the OLCC or the spouse, child, brother, sister, or parent of any such employees or representatives are not eligible, including liquor agents and their employees. But what they didn't tell the public is that this guy, Marks, and the other officials all circumvented the lottery. They did it by tapping into a small cache of bottles that were held by the agency in reserve as potential replacements. They were called safety stock. This was in case some of the bottles broke or were somehow messed up. They had a little kind of backup stash. And of course, these people swooped in and bought up the backup stash. I actually have my main interest in the whole story is somebody who was working. Let me see if I can get to this part of the story on the fly here. There was somebody, the state employee in each case, the state employee purchased a liquor. Each of them denied selling the liquor, which can go for thousands of dollars on the so-called secondary market. They said that they kept it for their personal use or they gave it as a gift. In an interview with the human resources investigator, the warehouse manager. Now, this was the person who these dudes were calling. Right. So imagine you work at the warehouse in Oregon and you're like guarding the Pappy Van Winkle. And you know that this stuff is like worth its weight in gold or more. And then you've got like the head of the OLCC and his cronies calling you up and being like, hey, so anyway, I'm going to need to get a bottle of that from you. Like, what a terrible position to be in, to be the warehouse manager. The warehouse manager appeared resigned to the logistical burdens posed by responding to so many requests for liquor from within the agency. She suggested she was powerless to address it because the policy predated her employment. She indicated she would welcome a change in this practice as it would make her job easier and she would not have to deal with these requests like that poor person.

Because some of this wasn't just lottery, this lottery system. Some of it was also just some preferred bottles of liquor that were not so rare that they were in the lottery system. They were just like preferred bottles of liquor that were being sort of redirected around the system and going to certain stores that are near the headquarters of the government agency. it wasn't just during the lottery season it was like kind of year round it'd be like okay well they they need some more of this special booze up at this store that is just happens to be across the street from the was it olcc whatever the right exactly yeah there was this that you're

right there was that one store in like milwaukee oregon that had a two and a half times more elmer t lee which is some other uh very desired i don't know whiskey of some kind or bourbon

I think by the same company Probably I think they've all got the

Pappy Van Winkle and Elmer Teeley They only sell bourbon That sounds like somebody made it in their bathtub

I think it's Buffalo Trace I'm doing that because I think I've had regular Like whatever the low shelf Buffalo Trace is before Because you can also just get that at bars or whatever

So is Buffalo Trace A particular style of bourbon Basically? No I think it's a brand

I could be totally wrong here But I believe that Buffalo Trace is a brand of Kentucky-style bourbon. had it before but they make some really high-end special stuff and i believe oh i see the elmer t yeah elmer t fud that's a buffalo trace yeah i believe i believe both of these are now here's the thing do you mind me jumping in here because i've been thinking about this story for a few days now and i kind of took a journey with it because at first you're just like oh you know that's kind of shitty people taking advantage of the system and then i get to the part of the story where it says well they they had these bottles of this really rare expensive liquor that was you know going up to the public in this lottery system but then they had a little backup you know a couple of bottles here and there for for backup in case the the ones that are for sale get broken or damaged in some way so i was like you know not saying it's right certainly not defending it and not saying it's moral but it seemed um conceivable to me it didn't seem like that shocking to me that people might be like well you know it's just like kind of the privilege of working here is a couple of bottles get routed in this way not to steal them but just to buy them and we have this lotto system let's say that we're putting up 50 bottles of this stuff but we have two that we save in the proverbial back room in case something gets damaged and me and my boss are going to split up those two if they're not needed and we're going to pay for it right like i was like again not saying that's the right thing to do but i can i can see myself being in that position or somebody being in that position being like well it's just kind of like that's the perk of the job sort of

i'm not actually put it this way i would 100 do it if i was in charge of the or but then because

i'm amoral but then you get to the part of the story and it sounds like no no no no this supposed backup system of a few bottles in case things are damaged they were putting like 46 bottles in that bucket and they were lottery. They were auctioning off like two or three bottles. Yeah, they had

way more. Yeah, of course, because it's like they all wanted to get their grubby mitts on the so-called backup, you know, stash.

Yeah, and so I feel like there's a big difference there. Like if it really was like, okay, we're taking like one-fifth of the supply that we just keep in reserve just in case of emergency. Okay, everything went fine. We have two emergency bottles left let's split it between us and we're going to pay for it and everything but whatever but no no they were saying they were doing that thing with i thought this was the height of comedy when i was a kid i was watching a tom and jerry uh cartoon and tom and jerry i don't know if you know this one's a cat one's a mouse they often fight right um but at the end of this one cartoon it looked like they were going to they were going to get along and they sat down to i believe some sort of holiday meal together and i believe tom the cat cut off A nice slice or two of ham For Jerry And put it down on his plate And then Tom I believe Slice off another little piece And then took the rest of the ham for himself And I feel like that's kind of What they're doing here I don't know if they mention that in this article But that's what they're doing here

Hold on let me check the last page Zero Tom and Jerry references

I will say this

Maybe it's because I'm not a big bourbon guy And also I'm just not a very i'm not a fancy lad in that way i mean i'm a fancy lad when it comes to certain things that i like you know the nicer version of certain certain stuff but like the idea of of paying you know thousands of dollars for for a bottle of uh of a bourbon is just so beyond my i don't know conception that the whole thing just feels and again if we've got listeners that love this stuff like they're just really into collecting bourbon and it's like it's what makes them happy lord knows i don't think there's an arguably me collecting boats i can't drive is not any worse than someone collecting bourbon they can't drink right how's that axle uh it's going well actually it's fixed and we're about to tow it over to a lot in bellingham and by we i mean my neighbor rich soon as i sign a couple documents that allows him to update the tabs this is this is how uh you know that rich and i are really cut from different cloths uh he does not want to like it's like a mile he does not want to tow the boat a mile with the tabs on the trailer expired um and i would i would drive the i would pull the boat here to portland with the tabs expired so i've got to sign a couple things so they can get those updated but then um we're all good let me ask you this and

this is a serious question rich your your neighbor yes do you have like neighbor do you have dirt on him like what like what what is going on like he is do he's done this whole project for you like do you have some like really scandalous information okay okay that's okay i believe

far less than he was making as a physician you don't think he's doing it for the money i i don't i don't get the sense it's for the money but i mean you know it's not it's not nothing i am paying him an hourly rate to do this i'll be honest with you i was i was pleasantly surprised that he took it because he was took your offer you mean that he took my offer i was making i mean it's let me start by saying it's an incredibly gracious and helpful thing that he's doing which is going he's doing it more for carrie than me let's be honest carrie wants it out of there i couldn't find anyone to fix it and so something had to happen and rich being a very sweet paternal type was like well let me come handle it so i was like thank you thank you thank you please tell me what i can do to pay for people to help you and obviously any materials and your time. And I was thinking he was going to be like, buy me dinner sometime. He's like, well, here's what I'll charge an hour. And I was like, okay, man, right on. I mean, that's fair. I agree with you. I actually would much rather pay for his time because I couldn't handle the guilt otherwise. But Rich is doing it because he is one of the kindest, most thoughtful people that i know and he just really cares about other people for instance he would never steal pappy van winkle from the hard-working bourbon lottery participants of

either oregon or washington i mean just to follow up on my question though are they photographs are they documents like what do you well as soon as i talk about them i lose some of my leverage i don't know if you understand how blackmail works okay no that's fair that's fair everything

Every detail I give only weakens my bargaining position.

No, that's true, of course, yeah.

Speaking of drinks, Starbucks has filed for a patent for a machine that would let its baristas make the complicated customized drinks that people seem to love so much. I feel like today I'm being a real kind of like, I'm really bringing my inner Dennis Miller out. I just have this skepticism about someone paying $3,000 for a bottle of bourbon or somebody ordering a very complicated drink at Starbucks. It's like, look, if these are things that make you happy or make people happy, again, I got a million things that make me happy that other people would miss me with that. So I don't mean to sound so derisive. This is the part of this story that really jumped out at me, Andrew. I didn't understand this, but like the extras that Starbucks that you can get, I thought I was under the impression that if you ordered a drink with like four pumps of something, that's just like, that's just how you're having your drink made. It's like, you know, asking for your coffee extra hot. I didn't realize because I've never ordered anything like that. There's an upcharge for all of it. Sales for this area of the business have doubled since 2019. It generates a billion dollars a year for Starbucks.

extra pumps really no i didn't know that either i don't usually play in that space myself

although did i tell you and sauces a billion extra dollars in revenue last year quick aside i meant

to tell you this a long time ago i had a pumpkin spice latte my very first pumpkin i bet it was good wasn't it yes and it was like the perfect perfect time and place to do it viva and i it almost reminded me of like when we were first dating in like the early 2000s and we were kind of like broke and a lot of like time we just sort of felt like back then we found ourselves like consumer taining ourselves a lot like going to a best buy and flipping through dvds or whatever this last winter i think it was like right before thanksgiving or something veves and i had a um dinner reservation and we were a little bit early for it or something we had about a half hour to kill and so there was a bookstore like a barnes and noble this is here in northgate is that a barnes and noble that is near us in northgate i believe that is and we're like let's just kick at old school go to the bookstore and just like kill 20 minutes you had to poop no you're constipated

you were like as soon as i step inside that barnes everything's gonna break loose stores do do that

but no um but anyway it was just kind of like it was a rainy kind of chilly night and we went into this bookstore we're wandering around looking at books and they had a starbucks inside there i'm not usually a starbucks person because there's just a lot of options and um i'm not a big you know i'm not a huge fan but i'm not up on a high horse about it or anything but we were in line i I was like, well, you know, I kind of didn't want just a straight black coffee or Americano or what I'd usually get. I was like, I'll try one of those pumpkin spice lattes. And Genevieve sort of she's like, oh, your first one. And the kid behind the counter was super like funny and cute and joking around with me about it. I can't remember what he said, but he was pretty funny. And I'll tell you what, Luke, they're good. Oh, yeah. They're really good. I bet you that was delicious. Very sugary. I'm not going to have one a lot, but like I just wanted to tell the world that pumpkin spice lattes taste good.

see to me it's like i that seems like a really um nice thing to have at night as like a dessert yeah it was before my meal that was the only problem yeah but even then it's like as a sweet treat as opposed like in the way you might get a frozen yogurt or get a cook you know cookie at auntie ann's or whatever like that's the category that falls into for me like i certainly think i would enjoy having one of those but for me personally like starting my day with that it's a little sugary it's interesting

Because, like, there's this place, Dutch Brothers, that's like, have they made their way to Seattle yet?

No, but I don't know if you remember, but I had not heard of them. And then you and I went on, I believe, our van road trip. We went on some road trip and you were pointing out every single one we passed. You're like, how did you not hear of these?

Well, it's a pretty, I think it's a sort of Oregon, maybe Oregon and Idaho and a little bit in Northern Cal kind of phenomenon. But what's so interesting about it is that it seems to be an entire – based on just like the signs that I – like the reader boards and whatever, it appears to be a coffee shop that's built for the people that feel like they can't get enough Skittles in their Starbucks coffee. Really?

So it's even more sugary drinks.

It is so popular. There is a line. I mean, I'll tell you this. They have very much harnessed this idea of like people's identity being that they like Dutch Brothers, which I have to really give them credit for. Like, again, literally you see people that have bumper stickers that say Dutch Mafia, and that means they like Dutch Brothers. People have the, you know, air freshener hanging from their, you know, rearview mirror. Like it's a it is a thing. It's much more of an identity than any other coffee place that I can really think of. maybe starbucks uh in that you know some people just they love they love their starbucks and and they love you know they've got the thing on their phone and um sorry i'm still struggling here but like the dutch brothers thing is fascinating to me because it seems like they're real they're they're sort of killer app is just like hey you know the stuff that you like at starbucks but you wish it had somehow more whipped cream more neon whipped cream on it we got you and that is a really

big customer base it turns out yeah and i'm yeah like same deal like i i don't go in for sweet coffees that much but i i have no desire to judge people who do because i eat all kinds of garbage and put all kinds of stuff in my body that i shouldn't so um that that's fine what i'm just and this is judgy now let me switch into my judgy uh mode here dutch mafia like what is that there's not even a connection there like okay you haven't heard of the dutch mafia in new york that right

yeah like clearly was shaking down small business owners and i i'm trying to think here and of course

i won't be able to riff anything on the fly but like the idea of something being dutch has a whole cultural context around it anyway i feel like you could find like some cozy word for like a dutch

club or some sort of dutch organization that's the problem andrew and like now by the way someone's gonna email in and say you know there is organized crime in the netherlands and that is true there i just googled it yeah there was you know a dutch mafia there probably still is but over here in oregon let's just say it's not a real it's i don't i don't think that they're on the uh you know watch list for the fbi that dutch mafia but again that's now i'm getting into yucking yums but like that's the energy around dutch brothers it's not like hugi like right right cozy you could have a cozy coffee and it's delicious and it'll just make you feel good inside it's like it's like in your face booyah it's like very lifted truck it's the monster energy drink of coffee it's very lifted truck it's very like uh you know it's a it's a whole kind of lifestyle and that's why dutch mafia is all that would do as opposed to like dutch appreciation club don't we love this coffee it's not for the person generally speaking who like thinks that's a cool fun way to be in the world it's for somebody who's pulling a significant amount of atvs behind their lifted truck uh and you know and and and and folks in that kind of generally speaking folks in that kind of world now i'm gonna hear from people who love dutch brothers and i i hope you keep loving it but i think we can all agree dutch mafia kind of doesn't make sense the name i don't like dutch

Mafia as a name I but in my attempt to come up with something better which I have not so far I'm on some website I can't even tell what this website is but I'm on I clicked on a link that says 30 Dutch things the Netherlands is famous for and known for and it's like Dutch cheese Stroopwafel oh yeah you've said that before what is that again that's like a it's like a

it's like yeah it's like uh it's like a yeah now they'll give it to you sometimes on i forget which airline but they actually have it as a little like a snack that you get with your coffee if

you're flying in the morning a little stroopwafel you said it right um there is yeah it looks like there's an extra el on here so i i don't know um but anyway but then you know it's just like listing windmills beer coffee shop culture and then it just says tall people one of the 30 things I mean, I guess that's true, but it's such a strange thing just to list here next to windmills.

Well, I'll tell you what, as I learned being married to someone in my first marriage who was from Pella, Iowa, which is like a very.

very, very Dutch in America place. They have a fake canal going through the town. They have windmills. You can get Dutch letters there. The whole town is pretty much Dutch, like people that are Americans but are of Dutch ancestry. As they used to say there at Central College, if it ain't Dutch, it ain't much. Oh, I kind of like that. And it actually kind of is. I should tell the Dutch mafia about that. Yeah, if it

rhymes, it chimes.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man! It's not from a female

Alright I don't know how much longer my voice is going to go today Which I'm hoping you cut out Each and every weird pause I had to use But I don't know what is going on

Sometimes I can clean that up

So this will classically be one of those times Where the listeners have no idea what I'm talking about They'll just be like It sounded okay to us because you carefully And surgically tried to fix it for me

Well I mean we aren't hearing you clearing your throat We're hearing the pauses The pauses after but I can sort of sometimes hear your voice start to go but yeah yeah um i'm just looking up synonyms of club i'm looking up i'm gonna go on vocal rest for the next two weeks is that okay yeah that sounds good i can uh i can handle things uh i'll just do the show solo i think probably i've been working on some poetry that i've been maybe wanting to share with the tens of listeners so maybe i can do like kind of an epic poem a day or something it'll rhyme um so i have a voicemail i want to call it the speed up i want to offer You should advertise that on the morning report I want to share a voicemail with you here That I've been thinking about for about 24 hours It's from our dear friend Jen And it harkens back to a story that I told A long time ago Something that happened to me when I was living In Los Angeles And I think Jen will set it up here But here's the thing I think I have some honest to God good advice For Jen And for what it's worth It does not come from a place of anger for a change Take a listen to Jen's question.

Luke, Andrew, it's Jen, formerly known as Uber Jen, calling from the beautiful Cherry Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. So, Andrew, I remember specifically a story that you had told when you lived in L.A. You parked somewhere and received a note on your car that if you were to just back up a little bit, somebody would be able to park in front of you. Now, on the street that I live on, it has been getting worse and worse. people just park willy-nilly they do not consider pulling forward pulling back they just pull in and park their car and then that leaves a half spot in front of them and a half a spot behind them so what was the note that was placed on your car was it was it handwritten was it printed because i'm ready to like go full like angry grandma and go to like print a bunch of these notes they're at the ready i mean but i don't want to be that person um but my rage is almost getting me there anyways also maybe i need to talk to my therapist about why parking is making me so angry anyways hope you're both well hope you're all well tense and okay bye oh my god now

this is interesting to me and something that i should mention is that this note that i received on my car was not a super angry note which is one of the reasons it really resonated with me and that I think about it a lot it was an example of a neighbor communicating with me in a way that I really got the message and I've carried it with me and I think about it all the time now and it's changed the way that I park and here's the deal Jen mentioned that maybe I had pulled back too far I think it doesn't really matter but I think the thing was I was parallel parking on a street And I would have been like kind of the first car in the line of cars that were parked on the street before a driveway, if that makes sense, or some sort of a curb. And I had not parked close enough to the curb. I'd left like, I don't know, half a car's length in front of me. And somebody had left a note on my car under the windshield wiper that said something like –

When you say curb, you mean driveway, right?

Yeah. Or end of the curb. It could also be like a stop. It could also be if you're if you're if you're at a cross street as well, like there's a certain amount of space that cars can fit into in any given parallel parking situation. Right. And if the person who's in the front or back of that line isn't parking close enough to the driveway or the curb of the cross street or whatever, you can end up taking up two spots. And chances are what I had done was left probably like half a car length of space in front of me. And then that did not leave enough room for somebody to park behind me and squeeze in between me and the other car that would have been behind me, if that makes sense. And so somebody left a note on my windshield that just said, hey, if you had pulled up about two feet, I could have parked behind you. And it wasn't like super angry.

or mean but nor was it like super gushy and just like hey neighbor it was just like hey this would have been it would have been nice if you had like just left enough room we just have dead space in front of your car and and now we're taking up the spots and now i see that all the time and of course you know living in some of the situations i've lived in where i've had to parallel park every single day outside my home but you can't get a you can't find a spot because you have a bunch of neighbors who are just like as jen says not really paying attention no situational awareness just pulling their car in and leaving a half a spot in front of them and a half a spot after them. I had to drive to the Eagles the other day for some big event a few weeks ago and there were no spots. I had to park like three blocks away. Listen, can I walk three blocks? Absolutely, it's good for me, that's fine. But there were so many spots available close to the place I was trying to go but they were all like half a spot, half a spot, half a spot because all the residents on the street were just like parking wherever and not paying attention to the fact that if they pulled up or pulled back a little bit they would be taking up less space and maybe more room for other cars to park there and so it is an irritation for me but the fact that this neighbor didn't like ball me out or anything they just said hey just so you know this is the case we could fit more cars here we're living in a city I'm like yeah that makes a lot of sense and so my advice to Jen is to capture that essence again you don't have to you don't have to bubble gum it up too much but like if you leave a note on somebody's car that says and i i have i have a specific piece of advice here that i i think that i love i don't know if you'll like it or not luke but if you leave a note i don't know if you're talking about printing these ahead of time or just writing a hand a handwritten note every now and then that part um if you say something that is sort of logical and explanatory just saying hey if you had pulled up a little bit we could have gotten another car in here um since the neighborhood is getting so uh dense this is something that we're trying to get our neighbors to think about or something i like the idea of putting a plural first person pronoun in there because it makes it sound like this is something like and jen can say like this is something that we're working on kind of implying that we as a neighborhood are working on it the we could just be her and her partner it doesn't really matter But by saying this is something that we're working on, it might make the people who are It could be her and her anger. What's that?

It could be Jen and her anger.

It could be Jen and her anger.

It doesn't even need to be another person.

Like if you don't write it angrily, you might actually get the message across like this note got across to me and actually change behavior. Because if you're just coming off as an angry crank, people are going to crumple it up, throw it on the ground, and probably maybe even act out even more. But if you're like, hey, we're kind of working on trying to get more spots. So if you could be cognizant of this, that would be great. Thanks. Signed your neighbor or something like that. I think you could actually get through to some of the people

Totally, and when I said it could be Jen and her anger, I didn't mean that Jen should Come in angry, I just meant it could be The royal we, kind of like But I like your idea of like saying This is kind of a neighborhood project, I would Say hand Write the note, even if you photocopy The handwritten note Like something about a typed note Is just going to read a little bit more like Serious, and you were saying You know um it can be direct but polite i don't even think that there would be a huge downside to saying i know these kinds of notes can be annoying but we've just got a lot of parking that goes on on the street now and it would just make everyone's life better if we could all really try to maximize the you know the curb space by pulling up close to things and then we can just get more cars and thank you so much like even being a little bit kind of overly polite i don't think that that's a bad thing um because it just really tells the person if a person is just a little bit predisposed to just get irked easily it's just like saying like look i wouldn't like get one of these notes either i totally get it but if we could all work together and just like scooch if we could all scooch then we'll get more cars on the street and everyone's life will be i love

the word scooch in this yeah i mean that that's a very disarming scooch has never been used in an

in an aggressive way right yeah hey maybe i should uh scooch your nose over closer to your eye

i'm in the dutch mafia that's my classic dutch i think you just wrote jen's note for her actually good job that's awesome um but yeah no i i do think that jen the reason that note stuck with me though was because it wasn't written in a super angry place just like i could just feel the disappointment and frustration of this person but not angry but just kind of like oh man come on We just need more part because it was a shitty place to park, you know, sometimes I had to park really far away from the apartment as well. So anyway, yeah, it's funny, though, because I do think that that's what got me in trouble with my neighbor in Wallingford. Remember, I made that argument. I'm like, I wrote it in pink ink. Like I tried I tried to make it as like what did you write again, though? What were the what was the goodness? I can't remember anymore. I mean, we could go back to that whole incident, but that's when my neighbor.

Got really aggressive towards me Like the first time I think I actually Like I threatened To call the cops Or something Like he was screaming At me Yeah no I mean

It sounded like Really aggressive And violent

Yeah I still Every now and then Do you think you could

Fix things with him By giving him a Dutch Bros Shaka sign Ceramic mug That's a Oh that's sold out Actually I'm sorry You can't get him that

I think he and his family Are like real Wallingford kind of People too Like I don't think That like this was Their thing Like they're like They're probably like Crunchy Liberal Like probably in this house we believe sign in the front yard kind of people it was a strange thing it wasn't like this was in some area like you say where it's like some dutch brothers jacked up truck or something like that and you with like a my other my other car is an ar-15 or something my other ride is your mom good lord but uh just telling you what i see in the dutch brothers

line andrew i jog by one most days yeah that was shocking anyway i hope that helps but you're saying but for the record the note that you wrote in pink ink was not aggressive no no no no i start like even the the language itself along with the color was a non-aggressive stance yeah like i

because i remember going in the house and like picking up a pen and being like oh this is kind of nice it's like a purple pinky thing and it became a joke on the show because i was like saying like i did not write an aggressive note in fact i wrote it in pink ink which is why people will still sometimes write into me like hey read this in pink ink like no offense but i think you got something wrong or whatever like clearly the pink ink did not uh do the trick in my particular so you never know where you're gonna meet somebody or or what their day has been like like you

definitely like i but we live in a society yes and i i feel like there and we you know we should wrap things up but i feel like two things are true one you never know the day someone is having and so it's it's worth trying to be gracious to people and give them the benefit of the doubt But also, I would never argue, and I don't think you're arguing this, but I would never argue that that also means we can't ever say to somebody nicely, could we all scooch?

No, no. I meant that more as a safety thing because of the way my one neighbor reacted when I left what I thought was a very nice note.

Why have my concealed carry permit, Andrew?

Okay, Dutch. But, yeah, I mean, so.

It ain't Dutch, it ain't much.

Yeah. So, anyway, yeah, do be careful of that. Like I I shouldn't extend this more, but like I'm trying not to be as I kind of judgy or angry about things I can't control or whatever. But like at the gym, there's there's a very I've talked about this before. And some people know very specifically the situation I'm talking about. But I go to this gym in the Northgate area and there's this area that is reserved for compact cars. And I drive a compact car. I drive a joke of a little compact hatchback car that's a Volkswagen and golf. You know, it's a tiny little compact car. But I have to squeeze in between these friggin SUVs that are over the line and I can barely get in or out of my car. And sometimes like I'll park and then one of these will appear after I'm leaving the gym. and i am so filled with fury and i want so badly to leave a note that just says your grand cherokee is not a compact car like it's ridiculous um and i get really angry about grand in the name right exactly and a grand compact i mean that's literally it like sometimes i cannot squeeze in because somebody has parked their giant suv but because it's like to me it's a giant suv because i drive an actual compact car to these people they probably are compact because it's not a canyon well it's probably a crossover yeah exactly and so they're like well it's small

for an suv it's like come on man do you know that i honestly didn't until i don't know maybe 10 years ago or something i didn't understand i didn't understand what the whole compact car only thing was about because my thought was well if it can fit in the lines of the parking spot like i really thought huh it's weird how they have like these things that say compact but like and i've i've never driven some super large car but like you know i'm trying to think what would be the large i had like a subaru outback i don't i don't know is that a compact probably not but i would be like this is it says compact but my car fits in here fine what i wasn't factoring in was well if you're at the very edge of the if you're filling the entire parking spot then if somebody parks next to you they might not be able to open their door like you need to have cars that are smaller so everyone can get in and out of their cars yeah but i really didn't i wasn't doing it to be mean or to think like oh i'm just can you know do whatever i want i literally was confused about what they were trying to tell me because i was like the car is within the line you know like the parking lines it's weird it says compact but i fit my subaru outback and you're just fine

and even a subaru outback like that that would be smaller than some of these suv crossover things that park next to me but even like our our sense of cars in this country is ridiculous like we have these giant homes that we put wheels on so that we're whatever i don't need to go on a car rant but i do just think that like americans have no idea what a compact a real compact car is anymore because if it's anything south of a canyon arrow then they think it's a compact car i don't think either of us are going

to be invited into the dutch mafia anytime soon no probably not or triple a you're gonna have to triple a you're gonna have to deal with that membership revoked as i speak all right uh that's going to do it for today's show as i listen as i run out of uh ability to speak i hope this is not like um this is not something that's going to i hope i really don't become one of those people that has to drink like hot tea or have polyps removed i was going to say like you can't drink

any of these sugary drinks we're talking about because i mean imagine what your throat would

be like then i haven't and i also have like an overly active response to that kind of stuff like sometimes i will like if becca and i are having dinner and we're like maybe staying somewhere, like we're on a trip, and I know we're in the same hotel room, I will actually choose what I'm eating based on what will cause me to have the least amount of glottal situation, because as Kerry used to say, you're sling-blading again.

Yeah, I'll take the eggnog latte. No, you won't, dear. No, you won't. Eight pumps.

Eight pumps. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow, Lord willing, and if my vocal cords work. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

in your office chair or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Power out.